Applications related to tracking, navigation, positioning, etc., of mobile devices are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) such as global positioning systems (GPS) are satellite-based systems used for navigation or position determination of a mobile device, based, for example, on trilateration of wireless signals received from satellites to estimate geographic position and heading. Hybrid positioning is also possible using wireless signals from cellular networks or terrestrial sources, such as wireless wide area networks (WWAN), global system for mobile communications (GSM), code division multiple access (CDMA), long term evolution (LTE) networks, etc.
On one hand, a user of a mobile device may wish to initiate and perform tracking functions on the mobile device for popular applications which involve navigation guidance, obtaining directions to geographical locations, obtaining information about the user's surroundings, vicinity, terrain, speed of motion, heading, etc.
On the other hand, a third party may wish to track real time location and movement of a mobile device with a view to determining the user's precise location and any related movement. Several applications rely on such tracking of a user's position. These applications may relate to law enforcement and surveillance where a law enforcement agency may wish to locate an individual of interest by tracking the individual's mobile device. Private or public agencies may wish to track employees or personnel—for example, a Taxi company may track the position of Taxis within the company's employ in order to efficiently manage its fleet of Taxis; a hospital may wish to track the location of key personnel such as, doctors or nurses; a super market or grocery store may wish to track the location of customers in order to obtain information on a user's shopping patterns and provide targeted advertisements to their mobile devices; office buildings may wish to track high level executives or key employees; highly secure environments may have an interest in tracking security personnel, as well as, detect any intruders or unauthorized mobile devices in the secure environments, etc. In all these examples, the tracking or positioning may be initiated by the third party wishing to track a mobile device, as opposed to previously mentioned tracking or positioning applications initiated by the mobile device user. This latter form of tracking is generally referred to as network based tracking or network based positioning (NBP).
Typically, NBP involves provisioning of resources for each mobile device tracked. When satellite based tracking may not be feasible (e.g., when the mobile device is located in an area where satellite signal coverage is weak or nonexistent, like an indoor location), the tracking may need to rely on terrestrial signals, managed, for example, by cellular networks, such as, GSM, CDMA, etc., or associated service providers/carriers. In some cases, specialized location beacons or WiFi access points may be employed, particularly within indoor locations to determine the location of mobile devices, based for example, on parameters of wireless signals transmitted to and received from the mobile devices. Such parameters may include time of arrival (TOA), time difference of arrival (TDOA), received signal strength indication (RSSI), round trip time (RTT), observed time difference (OTD) measurements, etc.
The resources required for NBP, for example, in terms of bandwidth and processing capacity, compete with other services provided by the networks, such as, voice, data, and/or multi-media communications. Further, the resources allocated for tracking one mobile device may also compete with resources allocated for tracking other mobile devices which are locatable within the network, particularly where the resources for NBP are scarce in relation to the number of locatable mobile devices. Accordingly, there is a need for intelligently managing the network resources among competing services, as well as, resource allocation within particular services such as NBP.